


Adventures in Lactose Intolerance

by Yatzuaka



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: And a ton of dairy products, Bodyswap, F/M, Quarantine, Sex, The swears, There's a fair amount of penis talk tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:08:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25175893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yatzuaka/pseuds/Yatzuaka
Summary: A terrible lab accident leaves body's swapped and opinions changed.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Loki
Comments: 15
Kudos: 119





	Adventures in Lactose Intolerance

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all,  
> Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy.  
> I actually started this last year, during one of my semi-annual rewatches of Farscape. (If you've watched the show, you may recognize a scene below lol.)  
> Anyway, it languished in my drafts until a few months ago, when I *almost* finished it. And then it languished some more until I had enough of feeling sorry for myself and my lack of interest in, well, anything.  
> This has been a Weird (and awful) couple of months, yo!  
> All that said, I hope you enjoy.  
> X

It felt so good. His eyes, _her_ eyes, the eyes now closed so tightly leaked tears. It was different than using a strap, so wildly different. She groaned and didn't recognize the sound that came out. 

But let's back up two months. 

It started like this: Bruce and Jane were bickering like an old married couple over some sort of machine, while Darcy tried not to whimper audibly. She'd been fighting off a migraine for days, and those two fools had managed to make it into full-blown reality with their incessant sniping. 

"Just push the fucking button!" Darcy finally erupted, pain lancing the tender spot behind her left eyeball at her own volume, her hand crashing down on the table for emphasis. 

Four things happened in rapid succession: Darcy accidentally hit the switch for one of Jane's myriad devices, Jane pressed the big, shiny green button on aforementioned geegaw, Loki poofed into existence with his usual sneer, and there was a loud flash of light and color that completely disoriented Darcy. 

How she'd gotten to the other side of the lab was a complete mystery, much like the sudden, blessed absence of pain.

"Sorry guys," she said, and stopped, confused by the foreign sound of her voice. "Is everyone alright?" She tried again, and what came out of her mouth was still wrong. 

Bruce was looking a bit green around the gills, which was a problem, and Jane was grabbing her own tits, something Darcy decided she would remark upon later, but the _real_ issue was that she could totally see herself. That could not be good. 

Darcy looked down and yelped. It was much farther to the floor than it should have been, nor was the unimpeded view of her feet something that should have been possible. Why was there so much leather covering her body?

No, holy Mashed Potatoes and Gravy, no. 

"This is bad," said Jane flatly, as Bruce swelled like a balloon, roaring and flailing. 

" _Green Protocol initiated_ ," a soothing voice intoned from speakers built into the ceiling. 

Darcy had exactly a second where she was able to think _Shit!_ before she toppled and the world went black. 

It was an indeterminate amount of time later when she woke up, an annoying voice buzzing around her.

"Leave me alone, Jane," Darcy said, and it dawned on her that her voice was still odd. She sat up, instead of pleading, as she customarily did, for five more minutes. 

"I'm Bruce," Jane said, but Darcy couldn't focus on that right then. 

Her hands patted her chest. It was flat. Her hands patted her face. It was not her face. She grabbed her crotch. There was an unmistakable appendage present that she certainly hadn't had the last time she'd peed.

"I've got a penis!" Darcy screeched. 

It moved inside her pants, as if to make doubly sure it's presence was known. _Boy howdy, was today shaping up to be a weird one_.

Because there wasn't much Darcy could offer in the way of scientific hypotheses, she ended up taking pictures of the four of them, printing them and laminating the results. She strung these on lanyards and took the Darcy one for herself. Draping her image on her now muscular Loki chest didn't exactly do anything, but it, and handing out the other three, did make her feel as if she had contributed in some fashion. 

Since there was no way to prove conclusively that their affliction couldn't be transmitted to the general populace, they decided to quarantine themselves (and keep the reason under as many wraps as they could manage), which could have been a real bummer had they been anywhere else. Stuck in a brand new lab that had several bathrooms and a well appointed kitchen area was hardly the tragedy it could have been in some of the other places Jane had hung her sensible, khaki hat.

(Jane's mom's cluttered shed in England came abruptly to mind, but Darcy had other things to noodle over. Like how to pee. She'd really love to take a leak, but then she'd have to touch Loki's penis, and she had the most excruciating crush on him, and that would be weird, right? Handling his tackle before he was more than dimly aware of her existence? Speaking of which…)

"This is intolerable," Loki said, in her own voice, just more British. 

One of her testicles slid around down in Loki's trousers for no reason at all as far as she could tell, and Darcy had never agreed more with anything in her entire life. She _longed_ to reach into those leathers she was wearing and adjust her junk. Loki's junk. The junk attached to the body she was inhabiting. _Whatever_. She shifted uncomfortably and muttered, "Tell me about it."

It was hella strange to see Loki's expressions on her own face, that sneer and the utter contempt etched onto her features. "As if you have anything to complain about. My body is a pristine temple, whereas yours…" he stopped abruptly, and took off her glasses to massage her eye sockets, "is a morass of pain and suffering."

He was not wrong, but, "Hey! That's my body you're denigrating, you ass."

* * *

Darcy had barely had any dairy products since she'd figured out she was lactose intolerant about 4 years ago, when Jane remarked that it wasn't normal to have diarrhea immediately after consuming a grilled cheese. Which should have been obvious, hindsight being 20/20 and all, but in her defense, she'd thought everyone got the milk shits. 

Naturally, she made several grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, and smiled placidly when Loki took one and didn't thank her. 

The groaning coming from the bathroom 15 minutes later was sweet music to her ears. 

* * *

Whatever had happened wasn't biological, or chemical, or natural. As they had no idea how or what had happened happened, they decided the prudent course of action would be to quarantine themselves. 

Jane hadn't fully turned into a green rage monster yet, but there were many close calls and she was glad to remain confined for the good of humanity. 

Darcy was likewise not entirely used to the strength that Loki apparently possessed, and had inadvertently crushed or broken many, many things. It was cool to get stuff off the top shelf without even getting up on her tiptoes, though. 

* * *

She woke up with a raging boner. Poking at it curiously didn't make it go away, it just made it bobble around in a friendly, good-natured sort of way. Ignoring it worked for a bit, but it came back, aching weirdly as she showered. 

It wasn't her first shower as Loki, but it was her first shower with an erection. It was a weird fucking experience. She tried to avoid the dangly, springy appendage, but it was inescapable, unavoidable. It demanded attention. Darcy couldn't seem to focus on anything but the heavy, weighty sensation below her stomach. Clenching her eyes shut, she swiped the soapy washcloth as quickly as she could across her balls, gasping at the glorious feeling, and then quickly coughing up the mouthful of water she'd sucked in. 

At least almost drowning had made her erection flag, and she jotted down that as a mental note _just in case_ , for future reference. Grateful at the reprieve, she tried to hurry through the rest of washing Loki's body. It went quickly, and without incident, until she reached down to the one last place she'd avoided after her earlier near-death experience. 

Apparently just thinking about it was enough to bring the troublesome appendage back to life. She tried, (really she did!) to keep it short and impersonal, but at some point the washcloth fell from her fingers, and then it was just her and her soapy hand and the most incredible sensations spiralling out from her penis. She twisted her wrist as she stroked, and then the world narrowed and she shouted and, well, the plastic shower curtain was never meant to be load-bearing. 

As Jane-in-Bruce banged on the door, Darcy lay on the tile floor, holding the ripped curtain in one hand, cum washing quickly down the drain, wondering what she had possibly done to deserve this ignominy. "I'm fine!" she croaked as Jane's pounding increased. 

"You sure?" Jane asked from the other side of the door, clearly sceptical. 

Darcy really wanted to bang her head into the wall again, but didn't, and instead managed a "Yeppers. Be right out!" in a patently false chipper tone. If Loki somehow ever found out about this little mishap, she had gotten to know him well enough in this hellish quarantine to know that he would never, ever let her live it down. 

* * *

Ice cream for dinner was starting to lose its appeal. Which was not something Darcy had ever anticipated happening in her entire life, but familiarity did, in fact, breed contempt. So she was making fondue for dinner. Cheese fondue. She could hardly wait for Loki's inevitable gastrointestinal distress. Jane kept giving her deeply meaningful looks everytime she served up something heavy on the dairy, but honestly? He deserved what meager payback she could sling his way. Sticks and stones could probably not break her bones in her current state, but words were pretty painful, too, especially when delivered with Loki's signature cutting flair. She tried not to take it personally, because she was frankly terrified of the thought of living potentially thousands of years in the wrong body and he must've felt similar, being in her frail, short-lived, often-times painful body. Just wait till she, well, her body got her period in - oh - about five days. She almost pitied him the experience, but she couldn't lie; she was also looking forward to a month (or more) off. 

* * *

Loki's body didn't need much in the way of sleep, but there was a key difference between that and her usual insomnia. Darcy didn't feel murderous after waking up at 3 am and not being able to fall back asleep - she felt mostly refreshed, which was just fucking _odd._ At first she had tried all her usual insomnia-related sleep-inducing breathing exercises, but had given up after the first few days as futile and slightly aggravating. 

She wasn't entirely surprised to find Loki standing in front of the fridge, letting all the cold air out - a sleepy and frustrated look on her face that Darcy recognized easily. 

"Hungry?" she asked, startling her own self at the sharpness of Loki's voice. Huh. And here she'd thought he'd had to work for that particular tone, but apparently it just came naturally, to this body, anyway. She tried for a co-conspirators smile when Loki turned around, but judging by Loki's answering scowl, maybe it didn't come across that way. 

For a second it looked as though he'd have some sort of awful, yet snappy rejoinder, but in the end he shook her head and went back to rummaging through the fridge. 

"I have no clue what I want," he finally grumbled from inside the fridge. Well, practically. "Your body is craving something, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is." Standing, he slammed the door and whirled at her, accusation quivering in every muscle. "Your body is defective."

Darcy couldn't help it. She giggled. And then it wouldn't stop. Loki pulled a face, turning to rifle through the cupboards. As the giggles waned into a stubborn grin that persisted no matter how much she tried to flatten it away, Darcy felt something like pity. Not enough to help him, though. There was not enough incentive in the world to tell Loki her body needed an orgasm and about a pound of dark chocolate. He'd figure it out sooner or later, surely, just like she'd done. 

* * *

At some point, Loki's barbs stung less. Darcy wasn't certain whether she'd just gotten used to them or if he was going soft. He questioned more, demanded less. It was, by turns, unsettling and very nearly charming. 

After a particularly trying day of failed experiments, Darcy wanted to cry. She missed her body, she missed the aches and pains, even the sleeplessness. She missed reaching down in the middle of the night and making herself come with fingers and toys. The novelty of peeing standing up had officially worn off. The longer she spent in Loki's body, the less likely it seemed that she would return to her own. The faith she had in Jane's stubborn intellect, in Bruce's dogged pursuit of answers and solutions, was fading. _Maybe_ , a small voice in her head whispered, _Bruce didn't want to change back. Maybe he was content to be rid of his beast, to lay the responsibility of his burden on someone else_. She shoved the thoughts ruthlessly aside, but the niggling doubt remained, burrowing deep. 

Sighing, she realized that sleep was not going to come, not with her mind as disordered as it was. It wasn't as if this body needed much in the way of that, anyway. 

There's a small measure of comfort in a cup of cocoa made with actual cream, thick and sweet, coating her tongue in richness, previously, an almost unthinkable luxury. 

"That smells heavenly," Loki said, in the gloom of the kitchen. "May I have some?"

Darcy thought about it, and in the end didn't have the heart to give in. "No." She smiled into her cocoa at Loki's outraged scoff, and having expected it, casually mentioned, "I'm lactose intolerant."

He sat down at the table across from her, left eyebrow arched higher and far more perfectly than Darcy herself had ever managed. "I should have known," Loki muttered darkly, even as her face seemed to betray a grudging sort of respect. 

Far more amiable now than she'd felt in weeks, she licked his upper lip free of the thick cocoa mustache that had accumulated and nodded, "Yes, you really should have." She didn't feel bad about her actions. Really, she didn't, still, "I'll show you how to make almond milk cocoa. It's not nearly as good as this, but you won't have to spend the next few hours crapping your brains out."

Loki didn't actually say anything, but with Loki's very acute vision, she had no problem seeing the grimace he made, even in the near dark. Darcy shrugged, "What? It's my body. You and I both know what happens, no point in sugar-coating it."

Later, when they both had their own steaming mugs, they sat in silence and sipped cocoa. It was almost companionable.

* * *

Darcy and Loki had taken to arguing, but it wasn't like before. It lacked the edge of their previous fights and involved more covert grinning. 

It was almost… nice. In a way. And it had the benefit of distracting them both from the thought of being stuck. 

* * *

Jane had taken to lamenting the fact that they cannot replicate the conditions of the incident. And truly they cannot - Darcy was no sorcerer, and Loki was no longer one. Her human body was not capable of "accessing the well", whatever that meant. 

Later, when midnight had rolled it's darkness around them, long after Jane and Bruce had exhausted themselves with hypotheses and experiments and their terrible penchant for mistaking dawn as an appropriate wake-up time, Loki and Darcy sat at the kitchen table. They share despair and cocoa, swap stories and almost-jokes. 

Darcy was no sorcerer, but… maybe, with practice, she could learn a one trick. Just one. Just _the_ one. 

Loki's laughter was entirely too disbelieving, just a bit manic. Darcy dropped the subject, but the idea had already taken root. 

* * *

In the shower, Darcy learned something about how Loki's body worked.

* * *

At the kitchen table, Darcy learned something about how Loki's mind worked. 

* * *

She tried to get drunk one night, and while she didn't quite manage to get more than slightly tipsy, she did get to watch Loki get hammered. That was fun. Until the puking. 

("It was an accident, I'm sorry. I forgot to count how many shots you had!" she told Loki the next morning, as she looked at her face, which was still green around the gills, after Loki had threatened retribution.)

* * *

He insisted that she learn how to properly meditate before he'd start considering teaching her in any capacity. The art of meditation was not something that Darcy naturally excelled at, despite her best efforts and her general (useless) knowledge of breathing exercises. It was excruciatingly slow going, especially since the lab was never precisely quiet. 

One evening, the idea of it almost culminated in the practice of it, but she caught a scent in the air. It was familiar, but it had never overwhelmed her like this. Her cock twitched then swelled, and Darcy couldn't help that her hands burrowed under the sheet and into the soft sleep pants she wore to bed. It was so easy to imagine what was happening in the supply closet Loki had claimed for his own. She closed her eyes, haunted by the smell of her own arousal, and let the sensations of her hand on the shaft between her legs bring her up and over into bliss. 

Orgasms as a man were messy, and she had to take her sticky pants off before she fell asleep. 

* * *

The days blended together, one nearly indistinguishable from the other. 

Until. 

* * *

They probably shouldn't, but there was a lot that should not have happened. 

All day she'd been filled with a restless energy. It coursed through her, filled her, came out of her fingertips like static electricity, shocking her and whoever or whatever she touched. Jane and Bruce had banished her from the workroom, which was honestly fine. She had started to hate the space anyway, filled with failure and lost hope as it was. 

She baked sometimes when she was stressed, but pounding risen bread dough didn't offer the release it generally did, nor did slathering butter on that freshly baked bread and shoving into her mouth. The hours crawled by until dark, until almost-quiet and she retreated to her repurposed storeroom, and that's when things got really bad. She wanted out, she wanted new, she wanted the world, and it _burned_ inside. Jacking off barely did anything to distract her from anything, such as it were. 

She was going stir crazy, and _nothing helped._

A soft knock came at the door. 

"Go away," Darcy pleaded. 

"I can hear you pacing in there and it's driving me round the bend," Loki replied. "Can you...Is there…" Darcy heard his deep sigh all the way in her bones. "May I offer some assistance?"

The bitter laugh that came out of Darcy was somehow all Loki, and it was a very disorienting, disconcerting experience. 

"I think your body wants to go conquer something… or something. I don't know! It's just -,"

"Your blood is boiling and there's a restlessness inside you fear will squeeze the breath out of your very lungs? Oh, yes. I'm familiar," Loki said drily from the other side of the door. 

There was a sound like something scraping against the door, and her voice came from much lower when Loki next spoke, "I was hoping to be back in my body before it came to this, but since that is apparently not going to happen, I suppose we shall have to work through this together."

Darcy slid down the door, and sat cross-legged braced against it. What came out of her mouth were words she'd never expected to use with Loki: "I trust you."

Through the door, he walked her through a basic visualization exercise. Slowly, by almost infinitesimal increments, Darcy felt the pressure start to subside. Then Loki whispered something in a tongue she didn't recognize, and suddenly every muscle tensed before releasing abruptly. The sensation made her gasp and shudder.

Spent, she stretched out her legs and leaned her head back against the door. "Was that as good for you as it was for me?" she asked, feeling better than she had in days. 

"No," said Loki shortly. "Good night, Darcy."

* * *

She did not expect to see him the next night, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking cocoa, but there he was.

"Thank you for last night," Darcy said, voice barely above a whisper. 

He looked so defeated, shoulders curled inward, hands wrapped around a mug, eyes down. He shrugged, "Think nothing of it."

There was literally and figuratively nothing else on Darcy's mind at that particular moment, nor had there been much in the way of extraneous thoughts, besides the obvious hunger and bathroom related ones. "Uhm," said Darcy, because it felt strangely icky to lie to him. 

She was curious. As well she should be; his body was almost as complicated as hers. (It had been weeks and weeks, and, like as not they were Familiar now.)

"If we must," Loki sighed into his cocoa, having apparently discerned her state of mind rather accurately. 

"What, and I mean no offense by this, the fuck was that? How am I, what do I?" Darcy stopped herself, took a deep breath and tried again, "Should I be worried that will happen again?"

"Likely," responded Loki with all the nonchalance in the world. 

She rolled her eyes so hard it tested the limits of Loki's optical nerves. If he had them. Which he probably did. She thought. 

"It would be nice to be forewarned," Darcy tried to coax. 

"Like I was forewarned about your demon cramps and the painful shredding of your uterine lining? Oh yes, I imagine a bit of forewarning is very nice, indeed," Loki side-eyed her with the tiniest smirk. 

Which… was a very fair point, actually. 

"When I was a kid I had ear infections. A lot of them," Darcy said, while Loki shifted in his chair, visibly uncomfortable. "And I, uhm, flew a lot, too, because my parents were divorced and lived on different continents. That's what's wrong with my ears, the high-pitched whining? It's tinnitus." Darcy unclenched her hands and tried to look open and honest and friendly, and that was probably two too many things to be attempting at once. 

"Ah," Loki glanced up from his cocoa. 

Darcy waited for anything else that might be forthcoming, but since that was apparently not going to happen any time soon, she politely excused herself before she throttled him. 

* * *

"Now imagine you were somewhere else," Loki was saying for the millionth time. "Really, imagine it."

"What do you think I'm doing?" Darcy asked, frustrated beyond belief. 

"If you were doing what I asked, we wouldn't still be talking."

Darcy screamed. 

* * *

The sex dreams were new and extraordinarily awkward. Trying to look Loki in the eye while she still had the image of him sprawled in a bed with her head between his thighs was one of the more difficult things she'd done since the awful quarantine had started. 

"Stop thinking about it as a trick," Loki was saying, "and think of it as something utterly normal and completely possible."

"Easy for you to say," Darcy muttered. 

"It's truly not," Loki retorted. "Nothing about this situation is easy."

* * *

Loki knocked on her door late at night. She had been watching Lord of the Rings on her laptop for the tenth time in a week, and was still annoyed when she had to pause it. 

"What?"

"May I come in?"

She did not want him there, but she reached over and opened the door anyway. 

"What?" she repeated when Loki had entered.

"I -," he paused and glanced around at the clutter of a life lived in a repurposed storage closet without a dresser, or indeed, any of the typical bedroom furniture which could have helped her keep the mess under control. Darcy very deliberately did not feel embarrassed by it. "I was wondering if I might join you."

Wordlessly, Darcy scooted the pile of clothes off her air mattress and gestured for him to take a seat. Gingerly, far more so than the situation warranted, in Darcy's opinion, Loki sat on the edge of the bed.

A few clicks restarted the movie, and Darcy settled in to watch it for the eleventh time. 

* * *

She slept better and longer than she had since the whole debacle had started. It was, of course, odd to wake up with Loki propped against her shoulder, her glasses thrown carelessly on the floor. He should know better, really. 

Noises that filtered through the door made it clear that Jane and Bruce were already up and about, abusing lab equipment and arguing about protocol. 

Darcy jostled Loki gently, "Hey, wake up." 

Her neck cracked as Loki sat up, wincing. "Tell me, do you ever wake up refreshed?" Loki asked, bleary-eyed and obviously cranky. 

Unable to help herself, she smiled back at him brightly, "Not really, no. But that's why there's coffee."

"Ugh," said Loki, mouth pulling into a twist of disgust.

* * *

The nightly visits in the kitchen had somehow become nightly visits in her storage closet to watch movies. Which was _fine._ Totally fine. Also fine was that Loki had taken to falling asleep in her narrow bed. It felt mostly platonic, but also not, especially when Darcy woke up with another raging boner. 

Also awkward and weird was when Loki changed shirts in front of her, and Darcy, for the life of her, couldn't figure out why. It was her body, her own breasts she ended up seeing, but it also wasn't in one sense, and that had to be why she blushed so hard when it happened. 

Maybe it was simply that it was different to see herself from the outside; that vulnerable curve of her neck, the sprinkle of freckles across her shoulders, the soft slope of her very pale hips.

She looked very feminine and for the first time in her life, Darcy could see herself from the outside, and she looked quite lovely. (Why now weren't her eyes immediately drawn to the flaws she'd been so focused on before? She could name them all by heart, and here her world narrowed to the enticing angle of a partially obscured nipple.)

* * *

She couldn't say who kissed who first. One minute they were arguing the merits of democracy and the next, they were pressed together and Darcy had her hand up Loki's shirt while he was trying to get into her pants. 

It felt like the other shoe had dropped, like something inevitable had finally happened. 

Strange to feel her nipples hardening under her fingertips, but not being the one gasping. Loki found her then, fingers sure and firm. There was something to be said for familiarity, for the bone-deep knowledge of oddly sensitive, abnormal erogenous zones. The spot left of her spine, directly where the flesh on her hip started feeling soft, made him wail if proper pressure was applied. Darcy stroked it precisely, enjoying how Loki jerked and gasped, the way his composure failed so utterly. 

Loki had a thing for soft bites on his neck, which normally freaked Darcy right the fuck out, but in their current circumstance drove Darcy to biting her cheek till it bled. She wanted to moan, she wanted to scream, but Jane, Bruce, they were right there. Like, four pieces of drywall and a few bits of insulation away, they were reading theoretical physics papers, or whatever the fuck they did before bed, and here, in repurposed Storage Closet 5, Loki was swallowing her cock. It was a mindfuck, but not completely beyond all comprehension.

She'd dreamed of it. She'd dreamed of all sorts of permutations of this scenario; him spread out in front of her, gleaming, waiting for her tongue. 

This was not at all reality. Elbows and knees ended up in the wrong places, though Loki seemed better at anticipating the best placement of limbs.

Finally naked, it struck Darcy again how unfairly she'd always viewed her own body, the vicious scrutiny she'd subjected it to so unnecessary. She touched the smooth expanse of her stomach, struck by the softness of her skin. Velvety and lush, warmer at the curve of her breasts, and Loki gasped again. 

It wasn't entirely odd, maybe, that she didn't recognize her own voice, mostly because it wasn't really her own, but nonetheless, she was the one who asked Loki, "May I, please?" like an overly precocious child actor in a bad production of Oliver Twist.

Still, absurdity aside, Loki obliged her, wrapping supple legs around her and pressing her forward with muted encouragements.

She hadn't quite been prepared for how soft, how warm, how wet she was from Loki's perspective, for what it was to press inside with something that wasn't fingers or tongue. 

The boundaries between her and him seemed less, like damp chiffon, like touching him was touching her. 

* * *

There was no other way to put it: Darcy liked having a dick. It was fun, it felt good, and it didn't feel like she had to chase down her orgasm with a 12 gauge shotgun while _en point._ After orgasm 10, it felt like she was coming cotton balls, but, like, who cared? She certainly didn't. 

After an amount of days she really wasn't able to count any more, (because the pervasive _sameness_ had rendered her ability to perceive the passing of time inoperative) _finally_ there was something different. 

Darcy woke up with a smile that would not quit and didn't even mind that for some ungodly reason she had an erection that could cut glass. She wouldn't have thought it possible after last night, but there it was. She flicked it with her index finger, watching as it bobbled back and forth. 

* * *

It was just as she'd started really getting comfortable in Loki's body that things shat the proverbial bed. Turned out that the ability to swap bodies was something the military was _very_ interested in. It didn't really matter that they shouldn't have known about their little predicament, not when they just showed up with their big guns and tiny brains and executive orders. 

Suddenly, there was an _urgency_ , a _need_ , to try one last time to fix the situation. Because if they didn't succeed before the idiots at the door broke through, they wouldn't have another shot. Bruce and Jane were already rigging their gear and computers to blow. It took less time than she would have assumed to do this, and despite how much effort had gone into both the research and the machines, both scientists were remarkably pragmatic about the whole thing. 

For Darcy, the initial panic gave way to an unworldly calm. She breathed in and out exactly as Loki had been instructing her to for weeks. She focused on somewhere she loved, somewhere she'd never been disappointed, somewhere she usually went everyday before work.

One moment she was there, distantly observing the final preparations for this final attempt to regain their bodies, and the next…

She was waking up. Still there, in the lab. Only, she was observing the world through glasses and smoke. Through the crowd of gun-toting soldiers, one of which was apparently aiming at Darcy, she smiled at Jane and Bruce, who were hovering over the smoldering remains of their equipment. 

Loki was nowhere to be seen. Darcy hoped he liked the coffee. And remembered to tip well.

* * *

Being confined alone for a few days was really nothing after the hellish months stuck in the lab, practically on top of three other adults. It was certainly not the punishment that it was intended to be, but she was nonetheless glad when she released. 

The first thing darcy noticed when she finally got home was that her plants had died. It was sad, of course, but at least this time it hadn't technically been the fault of her optimism and black thumb. So there was that. The second thing she noticed was that her fridge smelled like something had died inside, which was definitely a more immediate problem. 

Which was why when someone knocked on her door a half hour later, she was dirty and sticky and was wearing pink rubber gloves. 

The option of not opening her door didn't really occur to her, not till she saw Loki standing there, looking pristine and ever so handsome. He held a pair of cups in one hand and a small paper bag in the other. He smiled and opened his mouth, presumably to say something. 

Darcy slammed the door in his face. 

After a few deep, fortifying breaths, she took off her hideous rubber gloves, chucking them in the general direction of her sink, she attempted (futilely) to smooth her hair. With the biggest smile she could muster, Darcy reopened the door. 

"Loki, hi. Sorry about… that. Uhm. Hi. Hello," she said as she leaned against the door in what she hoped was a nonchalant fashion. 

Loki's lips twitched a little, like he was trying to suppress a grin, "Hullo Darcy. I do hope I'm not disturbing you too much."

Truth was, he was disturbing her; disturbing her peace and the equilibrium she'd barely managed to hang onto since quarantine. She'd never considered that he would show up, out of nowhere, to see her after they'd gone their separate ways. 

"May I come in?" he asked, eyes twinkling. "I come bearing gifts," he added. 

"Sure, just… excuse the mess." She felt awkward and unmoored from reality as she led him into her apartment.

Settling on the couch after she gestured to it, Loki sat the cardboard beverage holder on her coffee table and handed her the paper bag. 

Darcy's eyebrows rose as she accepted it; half curious, half apprehensive of the contents. She looked at him, and he waved in what could only be described as a magnanimous gesture for her to open it. 

"I brought you hot chocolate from that place you like," he said. 

Darcy frowned, "But you know I'm lactose intolerant?" Her hand burrowed into the bag while she continued to glare at him.

Loki smiled like the sun, and Darcy pulled out a package of Lactaid. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and reviews are love!


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